


Poison in Her Veins

by Half_PintGladiator



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Gen, Heavy Angst, Mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 16:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7515035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Half_PintGladiator/pseuds/Half_PintGladiator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angel comes to terms with how life under Jack's control is killing her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poison in Her Veins

**Author's Note:**

> Taking a brief detour from my usually happy stuff.

She was dying. Of course, that was obvious to her from the outset. The human body wasn’t made for taking in vast quantities of chemicals. Her muscles were slowly atrophying. The digital construct wings only did so much to counteract gravity on her world-weary body. Angel was young, but felt much, much older than she was.

Her world was a cage. A cage of metal and wafer-thin holomonitors. When her ports weren’t connected, she was still bound, hooked to her injectors by an invisible leash. Aside from the single, glowing light she was surrounded by darkness. All she knew of the outside world came from the monitors. Pictures, snatches of sound. It made her ache for the world outside her bunker. 

Her tears were tinted with Eridium. As much as she screamed, no one seemed to hear her. She didn’t dare rebel against Jack. Jack. That was funny, a few years earlier he was Dad. He really cared once. Then they drilled the holes into her skull and started pumping Eridium into her veins. They poisoned her. He poisoned her.

Angel felt a little thrill when she set the vault hunters up to enter her prison. How sweet freedom would taste. How good it would feel to no longer have the dull bone-deep ache brought on by her body’s slow decline. How good it would feel to see actual people again, even if the vault hunters were the last faces she ever saw. Maybe they would care enough to let her go. They would end the pain.

The hollows around her eyes had grown deeper. Her bags grew darker. But as the day approached, her heart grew lighter. Yes, there was such a thing as mercy. The pain would end soon enough. She would have never considered what could happen if there was such a thing as a second chance. She didn’t want to get her hopes up.

All she knew was that if there was such a thing as a second chance, she’d make the most of it. If not, she’d happily settle for the white light at the end of the tunnel and the peace of no longer being trapped in a metal cage built by her father. Anything had to be better than the life she knew.


End file.
